Homecoming

June 10-11, 2012

Big Sur, California
8 miles roundtrip, well 6, eh, maybe.
Gallery (6/10-15)

First, it feels a little strange backtracking to write about these experiences from a year ago, so here's some catch-up. Like ketchup (tasty). I ate ketchup on my bratwurst the other evening with Melody and her dad, Dave, on a camping/fishing trip in the Oneida Narrows of the Bear River in Idaho. More like fishing/camping, camping as more of an afterthought. 

We live in Logan, Utah, 10 minutes from our closest backcountry trailhead. Our dog has been quite wound up the past few days. Melody and I have been sick with the flu (no exercise for the mutt). Feeling better now, and just as soon as I finish writing this, we will head out to that canyon trailhead and Hero puppy will get the run of his life. He has no clue what's coming. I have never lived this close to big mountains and rivers to fish. If I were to hike nonstop to the ocean from here, it would take 11 days. I've never been so far.

 

Rewind. Catch-down (not as tasty). If there's one thing I have learned from backcountry trips and general outdoorsings, it's to PLAN AHEAD, which we did not do for this excursion. Melody's first drive to see Big Sur, my first in years, and we managed to get to the Kirk's Creek campground an hour before dark. Lucky us, we snagged the last backcountry camp spot, and all we had to do was park our car out on the highway and 'backpack' in. We met some new friends, a trio of raccoons  getting ready for bed-time in the bushes behind our tent. We all hung out and sipped some hot cocoa, played a game of swing-the-trekking-pole-at-the-overly-aggressive-animal,  and at the end of the night, our new pals had convinced us to pack our food back into the car. They had struck up a different arrangement with the campers next to us, and the raccons helped themselves to their t-bone steaks and chocolate bars after nightfall. "Ooooh, you were planning to eat that for breakfast? Ah, jeez, had we known.." Personally, I like the creatures.

The ocean, man the ocean.. something about it just sucks you in. For most of her own life, Melody believed she was born in Texas and grew up in New Mexico, a desert girl. Dessert girl. The most sugarly--ok, enough! She had always felt drawn toward water, and when she was 19 years of age, moved to Portland, with no short supply of that magnificent substance that turns the hillsides green and nurtures delicious aquatic beings. Then, on a trip to Oceanside, Oregon, a decrepit, old, faux-fisherman, going by the name of Scurvy Todd, recognized the fair-skinned brunette and told a tale, oh what a tale, a tail, a tale, "Born of the ocean she was!" To a pack of sea otters who would raise her as their own for 2 and 3-sevenths months, before Kelly and David, out on a seaside jaunt in their row boat, recognized that this was no place for a young girl, floating out on her back in the chill Pacific waters. And whisk her they did, away and off to the deserts, to bloom and grow as a cactus flower, but always with roots in the sea and all channels which flow there.

So a return to that natural environment feels more like a homecoming. I'll let pictures do most of the talking, but here are a few pointers:
1. Keep your zippers zipped and your rain fly on when ocean camping. There's a bit of moisture in the air.
2. Un-maintained mountain pathways in the California coastal ranges might mean painful bushwhacking through spiny hillside plants of southwesterly facing slopes.
3. Twenty-nine piles of mountain lion excrement on the trail are a warning sign.

We got wet, didn't make it all the way up Mt. Manuel, cats-up on the hills above us, but really had a fantastic time overall. Tough not to when you're being bathed with such glorious scenery. Wash it down with some rainbow sherbert and blueberry cheesecake ice cream from Marianne's, and a few days later, adios, up the coast, my Sweety's hand-in-hand with me, through redwoods and open beaches, whizzing past mileage signs and tall-tales, leaving again, this, my first home, on our months-long search for another.

Fare thee well, sweet Golden State.
Forever you walk in my heart and dance upon the memories of my senses.
Your mountains and rivers, trees and beaches
Forever encapsulate me.
But your forests are still empty, your meadows as deserts
Without the people who are my home
Away from home.

-Grasshopper